Rick Barnes Quotes (119 Quotes)

If he hadn't gotten hurt, we wouldn't have watched him play tonight. I think he'd be in the NBA.

This might be the worst game he's had shooting 3s, but he did a great job at the free throw line. With those five assists, it was a real good night for him.

I don't know what you guys expect. This is the NCAA Tournament. If you guys think we're going to blow teams out, then you don't have a feel for what we're doing. Are you kidding me I'm glad we're getting a chance to play one more time. Let's give Penn credit. It was what I expected.

You're always going to be disappointed when you don't win. It's over and done with. Our No. 1 goal now is the NCAA tournament. We're one of 65 teams and we hope to be the last one standing.

I look at it, and we didn't have a good night shooting the ball, but we still scored 82 points. There really were some good things.

There's no question. They're not going to take Penn lightly. They know better than that, and they know they're going to have to play good basketball to be successful.

We weren't the second-best team in the country when we played Duke. We weren't.

That may have been one of Brad's best games because he helped out in areas other than scoring on a tough shooting night.

I wasn't expecting us to be a No. 1. I learned a long time to quit worrying about that. Regardless of where we're seeded, we have to go out and win games.

It is a fine line between where you don't want him to not be aggressive. But then again, I don't mind if he leaves his feet. As long as he goes up in his area. Where he has been getting in trouble is he is jumping in to people. He just has to slow down.

I'm glad they said something like that. I'll be using that for the next few years. I guess we wanted it more during the regular season since we beat them and came into the tournament as the No. 1 seed. I don't doubt my players' desire one bit.

I didn't think we were aggressive enough offensively. We knew they were going to come with pressure, we felt like we should attack that pressure.

He's a totally different player. I think if he hadn't gotten hurt, we wouldn't be watching him right now. He would be playing in the NBA.

That's just stupidity. It's like the Indianapolis Colts (who won their first 13 games). We're six games in teams are going to get better.

How do I know I can't predict it. They know there's a Big 12 championship on the line. I know that. And I know we can't be afraid to go at it. But the worst thing you can do right now is try to overanalyze it.

We talked about the pros of coming back and pros of leaving. I told him he's going to have to make this decision I can't.

We had a tough night shooting the ball.

Look at Oklahoma. They start three seniors. They're a good basketball team. If people thought they were just going to go away, they (were wrong). You don't get ranked in the top five in the preseason if you don't have a good basketball team.

If it goes well in the league, even though my son has never shown any desire whatsoever to coach, ... In about four years if he doesn't have a job, I am going to hire him.

This time of year, it's all about winning. It's not an advantage playing those teams before. It's all about beating people to move on.

That's stupidity. We're six games in. That's just something for people to write about. There are plenty of good teams in this conference.

I want them to relax and almost have that kid-type attitude. I just want them to take care of the process and play the kind of basketball they're capable of playing.

What you like about opening the tournament in Dallas is the travel. Everyone's had to do a lot of traveling at this point of the year. It's nice to just take a bus trip up I-35.

I didn't know how P.J. would react. What he went through the other night was tough. We spent a lot of time to tell him he could bounce back. I told him the best thing would be to get lost in the game defensively and thought he was really good.

I don't know if anyone can really understand the stress of coaches until you go through it. I love this business, as we all do, but it's a tough profession. There's a lot of stress.

He's been great to me. He's always asked me what we could do to make my job better.

This is what it is this time of year. For us to do what we did today, in a tight game, it was terrific.

I want to see us play better. We haven't played as well as we are capable of playing, but we have the attitude of trying to get better.

He went over in August last year and he was due back over here the middle of next month.

I don't know what you guys (in the media) expected. This is the NCAA tournament. You think it's going to be a blowout, and it's not. Seeds mean nothing this time of year.

I still think we should be a good basketball team.

I have no problem with Daniel attempting to find out what his status may be in the upcoming draft. This is a good rule put in place for players to explore their draft status.

We're hopeful we'll know something by Friday afternoon, but we can't be sure of that. Mike's been great in practice, and he's been working hard, but like the rest of us he's hoping we can get a resolution to this thing and start playing him in games.

Regardless of what people are saying, N.C. State has not offered me the job. Texas is one of the best jobs in the country, and I'm happy here.

The major reason for our score is we had four of our five seniors leave school early last year to chase their dream of playing professionally. I'm not sure the score is a true reflection to the commitment and success we've had when it comes to education in our basketball program.

We hit them, they hit back and we didn't respond. We were not as aggressive as we needed to be, and allowed them to dictate to us our style of basketball.

Daniel Gibson 's demeanor throughout the whole game was good. What he's done the last couple games is what he's capable of. Everyone's happy and proud of him.

He's definitely stronger. He's always had great stamina. I don't know that I would ever call what happened to him a blessing, but he made the most of it, I know that.

He had it going. It hurt having them over there on the bench. But you have to deal with it. That's where we have got to have help from our bench.

That's college basketball. I just told them they needed to finish the game. An 18-point lead is nothing that can't be overcome and in February you expect teams to play hard.

I was impressed with his physical conditioning. He's like a mountain stream of running water. It goes up against one rock and turns another way it never stops flowing.

P.J. is special, he is. His mind-set, what he's got. I don't think he had any more motivation. ... This time of year, you would expect what he did today.

P.J. is special, he really is. He's just one of those guys who lets things go and moves along to the next play. He's not going to beat himself up very long. This time of year, you would expect him to do what he's done.

It's pretty simple. They made the plays they had to make. We didn't make the plays we had to make.

He is the difference in this team. We know he is going to give us everything hes got, and he does every night he goes out there.

P.J. showed today why he's the player he is. Not only you look at his line, but defensively what he did for us. You love anybody as a coach that's going to give you everything he's got.

I had to make A.J. realize he had to stay in front of people. We can't have his man always blowing by him. It's getting better.

I thought our guys did a good job of staying aggressive the last couple of minutes. We probably didn't make as many good decisions as we needed to be making in that situation but, overall, when they made their run and got back in it, we stayed with it. We pushed it back out there and made some free throws at the end. I'm happy with the fact that we had only seven turnovers and the job we did on the boards.

I don't know if there is a correlation or not. When we walked into this building today, we were prepared to set in for a four, five, six-point game. That's what we got.

He had it going. They were having a tough time with him.